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Look at Detroit, the first major American city ever to file for bankruptcy, and, after bemoaning how it got there and the hurt that's going to follow, say thank you for this object lesson in how a bad situation can be made worse.

Maybe the United States government will finally see more clearly what debt can do when politicians play silly games, such as right now making it seem some deficit reductions have made the debt issue nothing more than a shrug of the shoulders for the federal government. All those reductions did was temporarily slow down growth of a U.S. debt that will start spurting again and threaten us mightily if we don't address unsustainable entitlements.

More on that in a minute, but first, some discussion of Detroit, once America's queen city of manufacturing. That began going away decades ago, not because of bad calls by government, but because of changes in the national and international economies. The rich moved to surrounding suburbs, the poor stayed put and politicians had to decide what to do.

Some of what they came up with was pretty bad. The Heritage Foundation reviews how the city borrowed too much. It raised taxes enough to discourage new businesses from coming. A major error was putting off the funding of an unaffordable retirement system for public employees, thereby running up unfunded liabilities of $9 billion owed to retirees in health and other benefits as well as pensions.

A curse of electoral politics is that those seeking office promise everything to help them get elected, knowing very well they will not be around when the bill comes due. The unions cheer them on even as the office holders then keep other services going by failing to set aside sufficient money to pay for what's to come. Negotiating new deals with unions is tough, and it's easy to see why: People will have to live on less than they were told they would get.

Cities all over America have been engaging in this disreputable falderal to the tune of an overall $1.4 trillion retirement debt, though some of them, at any rate, are reportedly figuring out some answers that might help. Meanwhile, Heritage notes that Detroit has a 16 percent unemployment rate, a dysfunctional educational system, a police system that takes an hour to respond to calls and a total unfunded liability of $18 billion.

Observers say municipal bankruptcies aren't a fraction of what private bankruptcies are, but, for Detroit, it came to be the only answer because there just was no more money to keep things going. Michigan's Constitution prohibits cutting pensions, but federal law supersedes state law, and experts are quoted as saying a federal court will almost surely endorse some cutting, the gift, finally, of those politicians who irresponsibly pledged the impossible. Other stakeholders facing losses include bondholders. City services could be cut back, too.

No one would argue that the federal and city governments could ever be in exactly the same boat; it would be called counterfeiting if cities turned to expanding the money supply for their own purposes, for instance.

But there are principles that are much the same. Both have exceeded fiscal realities in pledges to the retired. The federal government can actually fix Social Security and Medicare with means-tested approaches that should not hurt anyone too much and the poor least, if any at all. Medicare is tougher, to be sure, but would be far less difficult if there were far less demagoguery about pushing old people off cliffs and other such moral thuggery.

Let the debt get to where it's aiming under current laws, Heritage analysts say, and trillion-dollar deficits will soon enough be back with us, interest on the debt could crowd out adequate financing for some worthy programs and economic growth could slow to painful levels.

Detroit should be a warning, not a model.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado.

Previously:

07/17/13: The profiling of George Zimmerman
07/10/13: Obama says Earth warm, may think it's flat
07/03/13: Senate immigration bill borders on reckless
06/26/13: Fake 'hero' must be caught and tried
06/19/13: With crime, control works --- just not the one considered the magical solution
06/12/13: What happened to the anti-Bush? Reality happened
06/05/13: Obama crosses bridge before coming to it
05/29/13: Biting the Apple: Nothing infuriates neo-socialist curmudgeons more than free enterprise of the vigorous, corporate kind expanding the reach of our lives
05/22/13: Evidence tells us the administrative state can be grotesquely unfair, unconstitutional, self-contradictory, unspeakably autocratically intrusive, stupid and morally repulsive
05/15/13: It's raining cats, dogs and scandals
05/08/13: Grads, heed Jefferson, not Obama
05/01/13: Letting planes fly on time
04/24/13: How about having a poetry century?
03/28/13: TV news can give you the blues
03/20/13: We're upside down and debt crash is coming
03/13/13: Stock market is downright perky. Blame the corporations
03/06/13: Bloomberg rivals Carrie Nation
02/27/13: The Wily One is proving in polls that it's no toughie to fool lots of people most of the time
02/20/13: On Obama, swans, goulash and invisibility
02/13/13: Drones and hypocrisy
01/30/13: The Nixonian Obama
01/23/13: Is Obama making JFK-style mistakes?
01/02/13: Kerry nomination emblematic of woes coming
12/26/12: Hollywood beats Harvard in history?
12/12/12: Immigration issues solve themselves
12/06/12: Durbin's deficiency
11/29/12: Man of the century
11/21/12: A big scandal coming?
11/14/12: U.S. should follow the Swedish path
11/07/12: Hanging from a poll
•10/31/12: A dream that wouldn't come true
•10/29/12: When the 'kooks' and 'racists' turn out to be your ideological allies
•10/24/12: The pettiness refuge
•10/18/12: An interruption that tells a bigger tale
•10/17/12: A recovery that wasn't
•10/12/12: Big Bird squabble points to something real
•10/11/12: The 'war' you don't hear about --- the one on average Americans
•08/22/12: Obama leadership: Romney's returns trump road to recovery
•08/15/12: Saving Medicare the Ryan way
•08/01/12: Combatting free speech
•07/25/12: Good and bad reactions to Colorado horror
•07/18/12: Apology time for Obama
•07/16/12: Free markets solve climate change threats
•07/11/12: Humans and particles and those who would order them
•07/06/12: Why we'll miss Andy Griffith
•07/05/12: All will feel Affordable Care Act's bite
•07/02/12: A social solution --- homes with dads
•06/27/12: Being a 'nation of immigrants' is not an excuse
•06/20/12: Barack Obama the autocrat
•06/18/12: Bradbury's lessons for today
•06/13/12: Should this leaking administration sink?
•06/11/12: Simpson bashes back on reform
•06/05/12: Legalize sugary drinks, ban dangerous drugs
•06/04/12: Keep America from going Greek
•06/01/12: Don't believe in Obama's fairy tales
•05/30/12: Writing a book? Beats prison
•05/23/12: Student loans fail students
•05/21/12: Europeanizing America into crisis
•05/16/12: Obama a bully, too
•05/15/12: Walker recall vote could swing national pension policy
•05/07/12: Bumbling, fumbling, benighted, old Washington near tipping point where freedom is done for
•05/02/12: The Communists cannot be happy
•04/30/12: There's no objective truth, least of all concerning behavior
•04/25/12: Forgive the extremist?
•04/23/12: Educational excellence is a game
•04/18/12: Obama's interventions help a few by the most autocratic, complicated, ineffective means possible, yet hurt many more
•04/16/12: Overregulation strikes again: The nanny state threatens to turn us into children
•04/11/12: Obama is not bonkers
•04/04/12: Will America vote against authoritarianism?
•04/02/12: 'Tipping point' on federal restraint approaches
•03/28/12: Obama truth from an open mike
•03/21/12: The progressive campaign for voter fraud
•03/19/12: Public pensions will get us if we don't watch out
•03/14/12: Politics needs reporting, not speculation
•03/12/12: Home of the free, the brave, the endangered
•03/07/12: Obama used Limbaugh as scapegoat
•03/05/12: Campaign substance lost in media melodrama
•03/01/12: When Big Brother drowns
•02/24/12: Obama goes gaseous on gas
•02/22/12: Political tears for trust in personal empowerment --- except in the bedroom
•02/17/12: Of cut-off ears and silenced mouths
•02/15/12: Obama is a joke whose antics aren't funny
•02/10/12: An energy boom looms, despite Obama
•02/08/12: Obama's assault on faith
•02/03/12: Can Romney get serious?
•01/27/12: Obama is like an Italian ship captain
•01/25/12: Newt Gingrich's first 100 days
•01/20/12: Obama's Keystone pipeline lies
•01/18/12: Critics worse than urinating Marines
•01/13/12: Ron Paul is a cartoonish character
•01/11/12: Newt Gingrich upset by Mitt Romney's brilliance
•01/09/12: How about regulating presidents, too?
•01/04/12: How America smothers itself
•12/30/11: A tax break that helps break the nation
•12/28/11: Watch out for the banana peel, Newt
•12/21/11: A tale of two men
•12/16/11: Strange happenings in Russia
•12/14/11: Tim Tebow is a man of character
•12/09/11: A populist, envy-mongering fraud divisively exacerbating resentment among different groups of Americans
•12/07/11: Tax games threaten nation
•12/05/11: Why Wal-Mart serves us better than Barney Frank
•11/30/11: Not writing off Newt
•11/28/11: Answers to the Iranian threat
•11/23/11: Failure of the incumbency investment
•11/18/11: Occupiers: Chop off their heads!
•11/16/11: Obama asks jobless to sacrifice
•11/09/11: Michael Moore's insufferable occupation
•11/04/11: Political tipping point is coming
•11/02/11: Idealogues versus 7 billion
•10/28/11: Obama games on student loans
•10/26/11: Wit and quick moves v. humanity and thoroughgoing honesty? It's no contest - or at least shouldn't be
•10/07/11: Baptists, bootleggers and Wall Street protesters
•10/05/11: Federal law will get you even if you watch out
•09/28/11: Leftist bugbears on the march
•09/23/11: Still hope for coal to help us
•09/21/11: Obama's Madoff ploy
•09/19/11: U.S. can't afford to wait until it happens
•09/14/11: Defending -- and strengthening -- gung ho collectivism
•09/12/11: A pipeline to better times
•09/08/11: Obama just keeps destroying jobs
•09/06/11: Ultra-feminists thwarting justice
•08/31/11: Corporations are people? Yes, Count the ways
•08/26/11: What an earthquake tells us about debt
•08/25/11: The tyranny of scientific consensus
•08/23/11: Fracking hardly a public health threat
•08/17/11: Why Obamacare won't control births
•08/15/11: Balanced budget amendment unbalanced idea
•08/10/11: Kerry's war on citizen speech
•08/05/11: Upside to the compromise leaving the door open for obnoxious maneuvers
•08/03/11: The people who may save America
•07/29/11: On making deals, Obama is no LBJ
•07/27/11: The threat behind the debt
•07/23/11: Mean opposition to means-testing
•07/20/11: Leftist babble makes debt crisis even worse
•07/18/11: Time to raise demagoguery ceiling
•07/13/11: Obama treating treaties badly
•07/08/11: Is decline of U.S. exaggerated?
•07/05/11: Not math deficiency, but demagoguery